Apparently, if you add up the ages of the people in the bible, and the things that are described in it, you get approximately 6,000 years. Now, some people apparently add it up to equal 10,000 years, or something in between. But you get the idea. Yes, its stupid. Yes, if flies in the face of every scientific discovery about dating substances. But, hey, apparently god has a sense of humor and plants fossils just to trick us. Or maybe the devil did it.

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If we ever travel thousands of light years to a planet inhabited by intelligent life, let's just make patterns in their crops and leave.

At one time they thought the Earth was the center of the universe and of course those who thought the Earth was flat. They want to believe so bad that all logic is pushed to the side of their pea brains.

Sadly, very very sadly, it is. Their twisted logic goes like this: "If any part of the bible is proven wrong then our [their] whole faith is in jeopardy so we [they] must adhere to ever bit of the bible and accept it all as the absolute truth." Thus they believe the universe was created in only 6 days in a really fuct-in-the-head order (because the bible said so) and original sin and all of creation is only about 6000 years old. Yet they are not put in psychiatric institutions because religion has a sacrosanct place in society.

What's worse is they're doing everything they can to corrupt science to their own ends to "prove" their beliefs. Thus "Answers in Genesis" and the Noah's Ark and bible & dinosaur parks. Kent Hovind (in jail for tax fraud) and Ken Ham (who looks like the missing link) are the main two YEC I know of. Scary men.

The worshippers of mental lazyness do indeed think the bible (and let's not forget all the other holy books for that matter) is gods word and therefore must be correct. And they defend it, first by trying to apply failed logic, and when they're caught they resort to foot-stomping and other childish forms of behaviour. The funny thing is, most modern creationists still allow women to have equal rights, positions in church and even to speak in church.

It begs the question; if they're willing to disregard certain portions of the bible but not others, who chooses what to not believe and what to believe?

I'm pretty certain the answer is because religion is popular. They WANT to have a "fanbase", and attacking science doesn't really hurt your fanbase. Attacking women, however, hurts half of your fanbase. No church with just men is a fun church.

This is also why they attack education so much. It's precisely education that makes people aware of the world and how it is studied, and if they could just get education stymied, there'd be easy pickings for the congregations to lie without getting caught. It's also cheaper for the faithful to attack education than to invest in educating their pastors/imams etc.

In the 17th century, Archbishop James Ussher wrote, "In Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti" (Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world.) In this book, he worked out that the first day of creation began at nightfall preceding Sunday, Oct 23, 4004 BC - by using biblical genealogy.

Ussher's specific choice of starting year may have been influenced by the then-widely-held belief that the Earth's potential duration was 6,000 years (4,000 before the birth of Christ and 2,000 after), corresponding to the six days of Creation, on the grounds that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:

Ussher was a Protestant. In the UK, Henry VIII had broken from the Church of Rome and rejected papal authority. This meant that there was no longer any way of resolving interpretation issues in the Bible (other than guidance from Luther who, himself, was not granted any infallibility.)

A consequence of this was that each man became his own priest. The Age of Science was dawning but the Scientific Method was in its infancy. Ussher did take great pains with his calculations and researched ancient documents. He himself was rabidly anti-Catholic and for this he received royal patronage and his ideas broadcast as "The final Proof of God." Ussher felt that the Church of England needed to steal a march on the papists; this was one way of doing it.

The results were widely praised and nobody could find fault with his meticulous research. It therefore became not so much established doctrine, but a "well it's been proven" concept.

The Puritans, who accepted such things, then went off to the Americas and took the idea with them. In response to later, mainly European, ideas and discoveries, their descendants, anxious not to offend God and anxious not to suffer cognitive dissonance, created an increasing number of excuses as to why the Earth was young and everyone else was mistaken.

Ussher's ideas, whilst not rejected, are rarely brought out, perhaps because the Biblical genealogies are patently unreliable. Instead, the YECs currently rely a lot on various anomalies in radio active decay and cumulative evidence of various floods in isolated areas.

They seem to have reached a point at which the war is over but they are still fighting, in the hopes that something will turn up which will add new piece of evidence, so they may start the war again.

At one time they thought the Earth was the center of the universe and of course those who thought the Earth was flat. They want to believe so bad that all logic is pushed to the side of their pea brains.

Minor correction Nick, at that time, they had no idea there was a universe. Although everything apparently revolved around the earth, according to the ignorant humans of the time.

Personally, I find YEC to make more sense than most of the alternative Christian stances. The "science is totes compatible with religion" brands essentially take the narrative of the Bible and put it into a blender until it's a nice, smooth cloud of vapor. They work from the same premise as YEC does that the Bible is absolutely true, except instead of standing their ground and defending its core elements they willfully disintegrate these elements not only as a means to enforce a NOMA non-aggression pact with science, but as a preemptive defense against any discoveries that could potentially stand in stark contrast to sacrosanct biblical assertions. As a result, the eternal, absolute authority of the Bible is reduced to a shape shifting ghost that attempts to validate itself by swathing itself around scientific explanations. For example, it's insisted that Genesis was always meant to be read as metaphorical, but since no Adam and Eve scenario could possibly make an iota of sense in the context of evolution it's reduced to silly poetry about how populations of humans, at some unspecified point of "perfection" in evolutionary development after being magically imbued with souls, disobeyed God, and that's why Jesus had to have a very bad weekend (now that was totally literal).

It's basically dogma that conforms to science while declaring science to be doing the conforming. It's why members of these kinds of sects are always so fond of trumpeting "scientific facts" from the Bible, pointing at vague passages using poetic language and declaring them to fit perfectly with the most current scientific conclusions. Why, God was talking about all this stuff way before it was considered cool by scientists! And, of course, if you point to any of the blatant scientific absurdities surrounding them you'll be met with the platitude of "the Bible is not supposed to be a science textbook!"

YEC is exactly what you'd expect from religion - claims to fixed, unyielding, absolute truths from a higher authority that scoff at the challenges of unbelievers. The more liberal Christian doctrines, however, seem to epitomize tacit concession to the weakness of their own position to the point of having to dilute a perfect God's words to rescue him from falsification.

It begs the question; if they're willing to disregard certain portions of the bible but not others, who chooses what to not believe and what to believe?

Most of them don't realize they're disregarding portions of the bible. Most of them have never read it. They're just worshipping how they've been told to worship. Like sheep.

When it's pointed out that they are disregarding portions of the bible, this is no problem. Their brain engages in a sort of double-think, where they can believe two completely contradictory things at once without conflict. They know the bible is partially wrong, but they simuntaneously know the bible is completely right.

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"Do you see a problem with insisting that the normal ways in which you determine fact from fiction is something you have to turn off in order to maintain the belief in God?" - JeffPT

The problem, though, is that while YEC might "make more sense" than other kinds of Christian theism, in that it doubles-down on what it believes to be true rather than compromising with reality, the fact is that the belief that something is true makes no difference to whether it is actually true. Think of it like a poker game, and YEC is running a bluff because its hand can't win. The most bluffing can do is convince people to 'quit' and let it win, but it can't actually win if people call its bluff.

It begs the question; if they're willing to disregard certain portions of the bible but not others, who chooses what to not believe and what to believe?

Most of them don't realize they're disregarding portions of the bible. Most of them have never read it. They're just worshipping how they've been told to worship. Like sheep.

When it's pointed out that they are disregarding portions of the bible, this is no problem. Their brain engages in a sort of double-think, where they can believe two completely contradictory things at once without conflict. They know the bible is partially wrong, but they simuntaneously know the bible is completely right.

I don't think this is quite the problem for non-literalist Christians that you guys think it is, or should be. A mainline (i.e. non-fundie) Christian presumably has faith that Jesus is their savior and that the core teachings or messages of the Bible are broadly "true." But they may have no problem admitting that beyond that, they simply don't know precisely which details are true in a strictly historical sense. They can certainly acknowledge that Old Testament creation legends and miracle stories are unlikely to be true in terms of any scientific details*. The takeaway from those stories is the belief that God created the universe and imbued humans with a purpose - the details are mythology created by ancient believers trying to explain their world, or provide a framework for the all-important message. In their view, fundies arguing about YEC are approaching the Bible in a fundamentally misguided way, and missing the forest for the trees...

*This is not necessarily some new-fangled liberal view arising from weakness, either. It goes back at least as far as St. Augustine, who criticized those who took Genesis literally in his own day. I would argue that it's the fundies and YECers who are outside of the traditional mainstream of Christianity, so we should not treat their approach as the default.

Adding to jedweber, Christian fundamentalism arose from a movement in Christianity towards revering the Bible as the sole source of God's revelation. Only a subset of Christian denominations are sola scriptura, and only a subset of those are Bible literalists.

So not every Christian is particularly concerned with proving the historical accuracy of the Bible, or even deciphering which is which.

I don't see either approach as being any less valid than the other; my opinion on the matter is simply from the position of faith. If I believed with all my heart that God had in any form inspired the Bible with the intention of conveying absolute truth I wouldn't be content to settle for halfhearted speculation of God's word being some liquified code that seeps into ancient mythology and couches itself neatly between the ramblings of men, of Genesis being a metaphor for a rock named God that rolls downhill and sets off a Rube Goldberg machine of the Big Bang, biogenesis, and evolution, of an entire narrative that's not meant to explain anything, but to be haunted by a Holy Spirit. It's the total apathy in spite of an unshakeable desire for God's wisdom which leaves me bewildered. It's like seeing enthusiastic Christians expressing awe over everything in nature they attribute to God from the trees to the tides, but becoming dreary-eyed and lethargic when faced with the entire substance of the Bible, simply chalking up most of it to irrelevant details that don't require going any further than the assume that there's a profound, spiritual meaning that's beyond them. It's not the fact that such Christians are not particularly concerned with deciphering historical details, but the fact that they don't seem to care whether there even are any details to be found. If I were as sure of the existence of God as I was the existence of my backyard I'd want to grab every trivial, minute detail of anything he could have possibly wanted to share that I could get my paws on, not leave it shrouded in mist.

To an outsider, it just looks like a gnawing doubt which too heavy an investment could threaten - the polar opposite of a mindset full of conviction in a divine truth.

If I were as sure of the existence of God as I was the existence of my backyard I'd want to grab every trivial, minute detail of anything he could have possibly wanted to share that I could get my paws on, not leave it shrouded in mist.

I think that's what the fundies are trying to do, claim knowledge down to the trivial, minute details. But mystery can have a powerful appeal.

Look, no one would have watched shows like "Lost" or "The X-Files" year after year if all the explanations were laid out matter-of-factly up front. People like the slow, incomplete reveal, the tantalizing hints that something amazing and wonderful and not fully explicable is behind it all, (And when the writers DO try to wrap things up with concrete explanations (i.e. when they get cancelled), look at how many fans end up angry and disappointed!)

Maybe that's a silly analogy, but many religions know how to invoke the appeal of mystery at least as well as any fiction writer.

Quote

The existence of theological mysteries is a doctrine of Catholic faith defined by the Vatican Council...

Theologians distinguish two classes of supernatural mysteries: the absolute (or theological) and the relative. An absolute mystery is a truth whose existence or possibility could not be discovered by a creature, and whose essence (inner substantial being) can be expressed by the finite mind only in terms of analogy, e.g., the Trinity. A relative mystery is a truth whose innermost nature alone (e.g., many of the Divine attributes), or whose existence alone (e.g., the positive ceremonial precepts of the Old Law), exceeds the natural knowing power of the creature....In its strict sense a mystery is a supernatural truth, one that of its very nature lies above the finite intelligence....The knowledge of the supernatural is more excellent than any human wisdom, because, although incomplete, it has a nobler object, and through its dependence on the unfailing word of God possesses a greater degree of certitude. The obscurity which surrounds the mysteries of faith results from the weakness of the human intellect, which, like the eye that gazes on the sun, is blinded by the fulness of light.http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_%281913%29/Mystery

I thought the analogy was apt for your point. I would contend that the typical fascination over mystery, however, is not simply being content to let it sit on a dusty pedestal to the end of days; it's the suspense, the anticipation, the mental repetition of "what are we going to uncover next?" that keeps people excited. If the X-Files didn't at least sustain the illusion of Mulder and Scully slowly getting closer to the truth by keeping the main characters on that path and tossing a bone when appropriate it would've been much less popular. The value of a good mystery is strongly correlated with the interest in unraveling it with the expectation of revealing something.

But this case is the complete opposite, where people are celebrating having a mystery which they clearly don't want to even be solved. Even the perspective that they worry that solving any mysteries therein will reduce the miraculous to the mundane flies in the face of pursuing God's wisdom in the first place as it's basically just an arbitrary decision that, okay, this is the point where God didn't want us to learn any more and we can chalk up the remainder to fun, magical riddles that were specifically designed not to be understood by us.

Actually, that's entirely the point. Believers want to work on solving the mystery of God. It's just that it's so huge that nobody can solve it, which doesn't stop them from trying. To the true believers who aren't fanatics, all of the things that science discovers are also clues to that mystery. They aren't going "no, no, this can't be true, I'm not listening, lalala" (that's how fanatics think, they assume they already know and thus don't want to hear anything else), they're going "how do I fit evolution/abiogenesis/bigbang/whatever into the mystery that is God"?

I would say that proclaiming something inexplicable and beyond the realm of human intellect is antithetical to the entire concept of investigation. Jedweber's link is a perfect example or how such denominations treat such mysteries - by declaring them outside the bounds of human study and reason. From their standpoint science can't possibly contribute because theological mystery "exceeds the natural knowing power of the creature", "lies above the finite intelligence", "results from the weakness of the human intellect, which, like the eye that gazes on the sun, is blinded by the fulness of light." For them the solution itself is the mystery. It's not something that's meant to be solved because it already is. There is nothing left to study; the fingerprints, the DNA, the body, the smoking gun, the signed confession, the written testimonies of over a dozen eye-witnesses, etc. are laid bare before you, but your puny human mind is just too weak to put it all together and see the big picture. They view supernatural truth as being the ultimate optical illusion - there's nothing to be decoded or studied or better understood, we simply fail to accurately perceive it.

Their concept of mystery here is fundamentally different from ours. Investigation of any other mystery would involve the pursuit of evidence with the expectation of greater understanding. Investigation of "theological mystery", however, involves presupposing the truth of specific religious tenets and accepting marked areas as being completely off-limits to understanding. Contrary to being open to science for clues they have already declared this mystery unsolvable - case closed, end of story, pencils down. Such behavior doesn't foster inquiry, it shuts it down. In the end the only thing that sets them apart from the fundies is that apparently whenever the magic decoder rings start getting too close to anything which could potentially be tested or investigated they start going haywire and shooting off sparks. I can certainly understand the appeal of a religion that works to make sure its every assertion is entirely unfalsifiable, claims to be an ally of science with the buzzword of "compatible", and boasts about being the golden mean between fundamentalism and angry atheism, but it's the way they rationalize such a situation to themselves that I find difficult to wrap my head around. It's basically divine revelation with static, declaring their pipeline to God to be strong enough to glean certain absolute truths which are beyond them, but not others.

I would say that proclaiming something inexplicable and beyond the realm of human intellect is antithetical to the entire concept of investigation. Jedweber's link is a perfect example or how such denominations treat such mysteries - by declaring them outside the bounds of human study and reason. From their standpoint science can't possibly contribute because theological mystery "exceeds the natural knowing power of the creature", "lies above the finite intelligence", "results from the weakness of the human intellect, which, like the eye that gazes on the sun, is blinded by the fulness of light." For them the solution itself is the mystery. It's not something that's meant to be solved because it already is.

Well, I don't see how science could even begin to investigate concepts like sin or the Trinity or the human/divine nature of Jesus. The religious we're talking about are just admitting that, but it doesn't mean they don't strive to understand such things more deeply. Even in the link I quoted, they don't put such issues entirely beyond study and reason (even if they put complete understanding out of reach). They just leave it to the realm of theology and philosophy.

We may think it's all BS about imaginary nonsense, but that's another story. I'm sure a field like theology has its own methods and standards, such as they may be, and it progresses over time, like Catholic theology building on the work of thinkers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

On the other hand, questions such as how and when the Earth came into being, or whether living creatures evolve over time, CAN be addressed with the tools of science. Plenty of religious people are fine with that, and willing to let science lead wherever it may. They would think that the fundies are wrongly mixing unrelated fields of study...

The Bible says so. The Bible is the word of YHWH, so it must be true. How do we know it's the word of YHWH? Because the Bible says so.

That's what you're missing. This makes perfect sense to a brainwashed person/theist.

It can't be that simple...it's that simple?

I don't think so. The stronger appeal is the natural instinct of people to live as their eers do, and embody the same values as they do. Which is a great stabilizing factor and not all that problematic unless it includes exclusivity in some form, which is of course very common in religion as well as dogmatic ideologies.That's so very problematic exactly because it provides a stable framework for social interaction (at least locally). Which is a good thing from an evolutionary perspective (depending, as always, on the environment) but well ... remember that bible bit about rape victims having to marry their rapists? That made sense from an evolutionary perspective too. It doesn't mean people aren't idiots/assholes, it just means their social group won't disintegrate.Most people just want to live comfortable lives and a huge part of that is not second-guessing the most fundamental part of your social habitat.

Feeble as it may be, the "... bible->god->bible->god ..." way of thinking is only a post-hoc rationalization in my view.

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"Deferinate" itself appears to be a new word... though I'm perfectly carmotic with it.-xphobe

365 days a year 101 dalmations39 books in the OT27 books in the NT72 virgins promised to follows of Allah for dying a martyr45 of Colts as prophesied by Cardinal Billy Dee Williams5 The number of Jackson siblings.=666 Coincidence?